


just a slow body

by flybbfly



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-14 13:26:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11784093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flybbfly/pseuds/flybbfly
Summary: Neil time travels by accident. For reasons unknown, he keeps ending up in Andrew Minyard's timeline.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Don't overthink it.

Because magic likes its arbitrary ages, it starts when Neil turns eighteen, an odd twisting sensation in his stomach pulling him downward and then—

He's in the same place. Or—no, he's not. It's still the Millport locker room, but the lockers are the wrong color, and the room is full of guys in soccer gear. 

“Hey, man, didn't see you,” one of the guys says, bumping in to Neil. “Where are your cleats?”

“My—what?”

“You're not trying to play in those, are you?” the guy says, gesturing to Neil's sneakers. “Come on, dude.” 

He's drugged or something. He has to be. There's no other explanation.

Except—he doesn't _feel_ drugged. So maybe it's a dream, except—he does the typical dream checks, counts his fingers and reads the fliers on the bulletin board near the door. Doesn't seem to be a dream.

He scans the fliers tacked up, searching for a hint, anything that might tell him what the hell is going on, and then his eyes fall on a schedule for the fall soccer season.

_Millport @ Scottsdale – 10/30/97_

_Tempe @ Millport – 11/4/97_

_Mesa @ Millport – 11/9/97_

_Millport @ Glendale – 11/11/97_

Ninety-seven? It can't be ninety-seven. It can't be _1997_. There's no way he blinked and ended up nearly twenty years in the past. 

Except that it quickly becomes apparent that that's exactly what happened. Neil is there for six insane hours, plays through a soccer game as a striker—he sucks, gets subbed off at halftime, curses the entire continent of Europe and kicks irritably at the ground in front of him hoping he doesn't have to spend one more second in these awful Before Exy years.

He wanders around absently after that. Without his binder, there's not a ton he can do. It's 1997, which is before he was born, which means his father shouldn't be a threat, but it's 1997, which means he doesn't have any of his money or resources and he'll need to do everything from scratch.

Until then, it's late at night and he has to sleep. In the morning he'll figure out who the school thinks he is, where he's supposed to live, how long he can stay. Maybe 1998 will prove safer than home.

He breaks back into the locker room for the night—old habits—but once he's there, there's that tug in the bottom of his stomach again, and then he's back in the Millport locker room in his own time. Or what he thinks is his own time, at least—he scans the bulletin board, and it seems to reflect the current exy season, but everything is so nuts he can't count on it—and then goes to his usual corner to sleep.

After that, it keeps happening, just whizzing him across the years, and he has no idea how to control it. He doesn't seem to lose much time, disappears and then comes back not a second later, if clocks can be trusted, which he's not sure they can. It usually happens when he's tired, and he can usually see it coming. There seems to be no real rhyme or reason to when he ends up, or at least no pattern that he can discern—sometimes it's the past. Sometimes it's the future. Sometimes he's there for hours at a time. Sometimes it's only a few minutes.

It becomes apparent, too, that Neil can't actually _change_ much. Little things, sure—like, once he ends up in 2005 and goes to the Millport library. He rips a page out of a book that hasn't been checked out in years and stuffs it in his pocket, and once he's back in 2017, he goes to look for it. The page is still ripped out.

But bigger things—nope. Once, he ends up in yesterday, and thinks it's the perfect opportunity to test the extent to which he can do anything, so he steals a screwdriver from the janitor's closet and undoes the screws that keep the doors in the locker room on their hinges.

Then he's back in today, and the doors are back on their hinges. He asks Coach about it, but Coach says when he came in this morning the doors were fine.

He never runs into anyone who actually knows him until it's almost the end of the exy season and he gets that familiar tugging in his stomach and ends up—somewhere.

It's the first time he moved in place as well as time, because he's in a house, or an apartment, really, and the tech is all newer than anything he's seen before, an impossibly thin TV and lights that flicker on as soon as he enters a room.

There's a middle-aged man sitting on the couch, tiny, blond, vaguely familiar, playing with a new-fangled cell phone, who glances up like this is typical for him at Neil's appearance.

“Neil?” the man says, voice emotionless. 

Neil jumps back, wishing he'd ignored his instincts and started carrying his gun everywhere even if it meant hiding it school. 

“Who are you? How do you know my name?”

The man stands up slowly, raising his hands like he's trying to calm a wild animal. Neil is thinking fast—there's glass all over the place that can easily be used as a weapon, but this man knows him as Neil, which means he probably isn't one of his father's people. Maybe he knows about the time travel. Maybe he's like some old wizard who can help Neil figure out what the fuck is going on.

“You don't know who I am,” the man says slowly. “So this must be—”

“Who are you talking to?” another voice calls from another room, also oddly familiar.

“No, stay in there, you might make the universe implode,” the man says, then redirects his attention toward Neil. “Is this your first time meeting me?”

“My first time,” Neil says. “We meet again?”

The man smiles a little. “Something like that."

“Who are you?” Neil says again.

“Andrew,” the man says. He hasn't come any closer, Neil notices, and he's still got his hands up.

“Is everything okay?” the other voice calls from the other room. It really _does_ sound like someone he knows, disturbingly so, but Neil can't put his finger on it.

“It's fine,” Andrew says, and then does that weird half-smile again like that's a funny thing to say.

“Who is that?” Neil says. “Why would the universe implode?”

“In a rare moment of wisdom, you said not to tell you,” Andrew says. “You probably knew you'd do something stupid and create some kind of paradox or something.” He looks at his watch. “You also said you were only here for a few minutes.”

“How do you—”

But then there's that twisting sensation again, and Neil is gone.

The next day, Wymack shows up, Kevin in tow, and then Neil meets Andrew Minyard for the second time in two days and promptly takes an exy racquet to the gut.

“You,” Neil gasps, shocked. Of course he was familiar—Minyard's been Kevin Day's shadow for months.

“Me,” Andrew says, grinning. “Kevin, did you hear that? I'm famous, too!”

*

Later that night—after Neil has signed the contract that will kill him or save him, after he's agreed to go to Palmetto early, after all that—he ends up moving in space and time again, this time ending up on an exy court somewhere.

Neil can't even begrudge this thing, whatever it is, for extending his already exhausting day, because now he gets to watch what seems to be a pro exy game. He can make out the teams on the scoreboard—Philadelphia and St. Louis—and he's close enough to the front that he can lean forward, see it up close when someone gets checked against the wall.

Whoever Philly have in goal is incredible. Neil spends the entire first half watching them make impossible saves. It's not until they get subbed out at halftime that Neil sees the name on the back of their jersey— _Minyard_ —which makes this the second time in two days the universe has dragged him through multiple dimensions to see this kid do mundane things. Three if you count Neil's actual present day.

And, okay, that shutout wasn't exactly mundane, but that doesn't mean it has anything to do with Neil. He pushes his way through the crowd, wishing he knew how to control this thing and also where exactly he is. St. Louis is half a continent away from Millport. How far can this power take him? Where does it stop? What if it fucks up and he ends up in the middle of the ocean or something? What does Andrew Minyard have to do with it?

Neil isn't looking where he's going, so he doesn't notice when he nearly slams into the exact person he's thinking about.

“I thought you'd be around here,” Andrew says. He's got all his gear on except his helmet, which is tucked under his arm. He looks Neil up and down. “The dark hair never really suited you.”

“I didn't ask,” Neil says.

“You will,” Andrew says. 

Neil is torn. This Andrew looks miles different from the Andrew he met a few hours ago, and not just because he's older. The manic smile is gone, replaced with a cool, neutral expression that reminds Neil more of the middle-aged Andrew. But that Andrew was different, too—this one looks like he hasn't smiled in years, and that one at least seemed like he had a sense of humor.

“You're really good,” Neil says. “I've never seen anyone make saves like that. I thought you didn't care, but—”

“I don't,” Andrew says.

“How can you not care and play like that?” Neil says.

Andrew stares at him. “Your personality has been stagnant for literal decades.”

“Decades,” Neil says faintly. “You've known me for decades?”

“Seven years,” Andrew says. “How long have you known me?”

“Two days,” Neil says.

Andrew looks him up and down again. “That makes sense.”

“Are you going to tell me what's going on?” 

Andrew cocks his head to the side, considering. “You'll figure it out.”

“What if I don't?”

“You will.”

“How do you know?”

“Because, Neil,” Andrew says, almost impatient, “I know _you_.”

And then there's that tug again, and Neil is back in Millport, in his own time, alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick note—I don't really intend to explore where the power comes from or anything like that. This entire thing is just an excuse to have Neil interact with different versions of Andrew.
> 
> Also, the first four parts of this are on tumblr in unedited, messy forms. I'm revising & posting a chapter a day-ish. 
> 
> Title is from [White Ferrari by Frank](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA2wnQkguMU), aka the most Andreil song ever written.
> 
> Come talk to me on [tumblr](http://wilsherejack.tumblr.com).


	2. Chapter 2

The first time Andrew sees Neil, Andrew is eight and Neil is a blur of bright colors that don't quite go together holding out a bag of Skittles.

“I'm not supposed to take candy from strangers,” Andrew says. 

“Yeah, but strangers aren't the problem, are they?” the blur of bright colors says.

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

The man stares at him, and then, abruptly, he looks away. Andrew knows about that kind of looking away. It's the kind adults do when they see Paul dragging him by the wrist, or when Andrew shows up at school with a black eye and an attitude problem. 

But then the man looks back.

“I'm Neil,” he says. “I'm sorry. I can't change much, but—do you want a ride to school?”

Andrew is suspicious, but Neil's right. Strangers aren't the problem. He gets in the car.

*

The second time Andrew sees Neil, Andrew is sixteen and Neil looks younger than he did the last time Andrew saw him. But maybe that's just because Andrew is older now.

“So you've always been this short,” Neil observes.

Andrew doesn't hesitate for another moment before slamming him against a locker, blade at his throat. Neil doesn't fight back.

“Who are you?” Andrew says. “What do you want?”

“I'm Neil,” Neil says. “But you know that. Right?”

“You gave me a ride to school,” Andrew says. There's something else, but he can't focus on it. Something at the corner of his vision, just on the edge of his memory. “Who are you?”

“No one,” Neil says. He tilts his head to the side, examining Andrew's face even though Andrew has a knife pressing into the base of Neil's throat. “Joyless and destructive sounds about right.”

“You read my file,” Andrew says. He presses his knife in further just to see if this hallucination will bleed, except how can he be a hallucination if he gave Andrew candy and drove him to school? 

“Not quite.”

“I will kill you,” Andrew informs him. “It would be easy.”

“I don't think it would,” Neil says. “I don't think you will, anyway. I have it on good authority.”

“Whose authority?”

Neil almost smiles. “Yours.”

Then he disappears again, like he was never there, and Andrew is standing in the hallway, his only evidence that this wasn't some odd dream the blood on his knife.

*

The third time Andrew sees Neil is in Millport, Arizona, and Andrew doesn't recognize him with the dyed hair and contact lenses and lack of severe facial scarring. He's younger than either of Andrew's memories of him, wild-eyed, and stopping him with the racquet is an instinct more than a decision and delightfully funny besides.

“You,” Neil Josten chokes out, which is interesting, because Kevin might be famous, but Andrew wouldn't be unless someone was very closely paying attention to college exy.

“Me,” Andrew says, smiling sweetly. Well, not sweetly.

“Goddammit, Minyard,” Wymack says, pissed off. “This is why we can't have nice things.”

Except that Neil Josten looks more scared of Wymack than he is of Andrew, and isn't that interesting?

“Oh, Coach,” Andrew says, “if he were nice, he wouldn't be any use to us, would he?”

“He's no use to us if you break him.”

“You'd rather I let him go?” Andrew says. He salutes Neil, two fingers to his temple. “Better luck next time.”

“Fuck you,” Neil says. “Whose racquet did you steal?”

It's going to be a fun summer, Andrew decides. 

“Borrow,” Andrew says, tossing it back at least partially to see what Neil does with the weapon. “Here you go.”

Neil checks for damage with one hand and clings to the racquet with the other. Another junkie. Typical.

*

Andrew stays mostly quiet through getting Neil from the airport to his car. It's a consequence of the withdrawal, which he can feel in the back of his head, edging over his brain. He gets a cigarette lit as soon as they get outside, and it helps a little, but mainly he just wants one of his pills or maybe a drink.

Soon. 

“Neil Josten,” Andrew says when Neil gets in the car. “Here for the summer, hm?”

“Yes.”

Neil thinks he's Aaron, an assumption Andrew is relying on. He angles their conversation around Kevin, fishing for anything Neil might think about him. 

It's not until a red light that Andrew figures it out. He meets Neil's eyes to ask him about why he said no to Wymack, and clear as day, there are rings around his irises. He's wearing contacts, but his file said nothing about corrective lenses. 

It clicks, suddenly: Andrew's brain substitutes one perfectly-remembered face for this one, another Neil from another time, probably older than this one, with red-brown hair and pale blue eyes and all those scars but the same nose, chin, jaw. 

Coincidences don't exist. Not ones like this. 

“Do you believe in fate?” Andrew says.

At first he thinks it might be a dream. This isn't the same calm, sad adult who showed up at Andrew's bus stop, and it's not the same calm, irritating young man who showed up in Andrew's high school. This is a wild animal, and he glances back and forth between Andrew and the car door like he's going to barrel roll out of it onto the highway, but he has to know it's safer in here than it is out there. Marginally, but it is.

He's a caged wild animal, then. He doesn't seem to remember their childhood meetings, but Andrew was younger then and Neil must have been older. Unless he has some kind of Benjamin Button thing going on.

“No,” Neil says. “Do you?”

“Luck, then.”

“Only the bad sort.”

Andrew makes a reckless lane switch. Neil doesn't look scared, but he makes a pointed comment about it being too nice of a car to wreck.

“Don't be so afraid to die. If you are, you have no place on our court.”

“We're talking about a sport, not a death match.”

What have Wymack and Kevin brought to his court? Is Neil some kind of a witch? Is Andrew supposed to believe witches are real? Like Neil just—what, grabbed a Time Turner and showed up at Andrew's high school? At Andrew's elementary school bus stop?

He gave Andrew a ride once. Something hysterical bubbles up in Andrew's gut: he's returning the favor, even if it is inadvertent. 

It should be the end of it. Andrew should drive both of them into a ditch. But if older-Neil showed up in Andrew's life, that must mean he survives this car ride, so driving them both into a ditch would only succeed in killing Andrew, which would leave Kevin unprotected.

Unless it was some kind of a ghost showing up to avenge his death. That could almost be right, but ghosts don't bleed, and Andrew definitely cut Neil when Neil was in his high school.

Maybe there were more. If he focuses—which is hard when there's the threat of nausea tugging at the back of his throat—if he focuses there seem to be more. Neil or someone who looks like him copy and pasted into Andrew's childhood. Sitting outside parks. Standing in crowds. Just over the fence, staring back at Andrew like—like he knew him. Sometimes just out of Andrew's line of vision, in the corner of Andrew's eye, disappearing when Andrew looked at him head-on, like a fairy.

But Andrew can't know if it's a memory or his imagination. Maybe he invented him. Maybe he dreamed him up. 

That's unsettling.

Andrew continues the charade for as long as possible. He isn't supposed to be off his meds, and he doesn't know if Neil will tattle or not yet. Besides, this entire sober meeting has only given him more reason to think this person is not to be trusted. 

But then Neil figures it out, salutes Andrew, throws Andrew's own words back at him. 

Even this version of Neil doesn't seem all the way real. He's a cipher, and Andrew doesn't have the key to decode him just yet. 

Between that and the time travel—well, Andrew definitely has someone interesting on his hands.

“I don't think the amusement will last,” he tells Neil. “It never does.”

“Don't mess with me.”

Andrew cocks an eyebrow. “Or what?” He pictures a dozen copies of Neil showing up to torment him, copy and pasted into the future until they finally just kill Andrew to get it over with, but this child doesn't look capable of that kind of premeditated torture. Lashing out reflexively, yes. Cold-blooded murder? Andrew doesn't think so. 

Of course, he doesn't know Neil yet. Maybe he is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come talk to me on [tumblr](http://wilsherejack.tumblr.com)


	3. Chapter 3

Everything goes the way it does in the books, except that occasionally someone looks up and Neil isn't there and the air smells a bit like burning, but then they blink and he's right back in front of them. The Ravens switch divisions. Neil and the monsters go to Eden's Twilight. Neil pays someone to knock him out. He hitchhikes back to Palmetto. He tells Andrew his half-truths and whole lies. They go on Kathy Ferdinand's show. He fights Riko. Andrew offers Neil his protection.

It goes the same. Sometimes Neil travels in time and space, sometimes only in time. Usually to somewhere around Andrew, except he hates Andrew, so for the most part, Neil stays away, even when Andrew is an angry kid, even when Andrew is a calm adult frowning slightly like he can sense Neil's presence.

It's almost normal, except that sometimes he catches Andrew staring at him—in the rearview mirror at night when Neil is half-asleep in the backseat of Andrew's car on the way back from evening practices and Andrew should really be making sure he doesn't hit a student on their way home from a late night study session; at dinner with a wide smile on his face when Neil, exhausted, almost dozes off into a plate of chicken and pasta; in the disoriented moments after Neil returns from somewhere especially distant or strange, when he's blinking his way back into the present and sees Andrew watching, joyless, that same intense expression on his face from Wymack's apartment. When he meets Neil's eyes, he grins and returns to whatever he was doing.

Neil doesn't get it. Why is Andrew watching him? Beyond their deal, Andrew doesn't care about him, and Andrew thinks he knows Neil's biggest secrets, so what is it? 

The strangeness of it digs under Neil's skin and burrows, distracting him from the task at hand. He still doesn't trust Andrew all the way, and this just sets him more on edge. 

Until one day, when he gets whisked into a bedroom in the middle of the night and the figure on the bed stirs.

“Neil?” Andrew says. How does he know it's Neil? “Come here.” His voice is sleepy. In the dark, Neil can't see his face, can't try to figure out how old he is, but he approaches the bed anyway. Apparently in whatever time this is, Andrew is a light sleeper who doesn't try to murder anyone who wakes him up.

“What?” 

Andrew hooks his fingers in the front of Neil's shirt. “I didn't expect you until morning,” he says, and tugs until Neil follows him down.

“Why were you expecting me?” Neil says. 

“Because you called to tell me you were coming.” Andrew's fingers are still curled in the front of Neil's shirt, but his eyes are closed like Neil is being superbly irritating even if it's Andrew who is acting more insane than usual. The length of his arm is pressed against Neil's chest. “Go to sleep.”

“Andrew,” Neil says carefully. “What year is it?”

Andrew's eyes fly open, and then he jerks back so that no part of him is touching Neil. 

“What year is it for you?”

“2017,” Neil says. 

“Fuck,” Andrew says under his breath, and then gets up, turns on the light, and squints at Neil as his eyes adjust. “When in 2017?”

“October.”

Something seems to click for Andrew. Neil waits, irritated. 

“What?” 

“If it were August, you might've put my own knife through my eye,” Andrew says.

“I think I'm more in danger of that than you are.”

“Didn't I say I would protect you? That applies no matter when you show up.”

“So you know about,” Neil pauses, “all of this.”

“Evidently.”

“Why do I keep ending up in your life?” Neil asks, which doesn't make any sense, except that Andrew doesn't call him out on it not making any sense, which makes it weirder. “You know, don't you?” 

There's a split second of something on Andrew's face that Neil doesn't recognize before it shutters again. Andrew looks at the clock on his nightstand.

“You might have a guaranteed eight hours of uninterrupted sleep when you get back to 2017, but this is real time for me.”

“No. If you know, explain.”

“I don't know,” Andrew says. Neil can't tell if it's true or not, except that Andrew doesn't lie. “How much longer are you going to be here?”

“How am I supposed to know that?” 

“So then,” Andrew says, but he doesn't elaborate, only continues to stare at Neil like he's never seen him before. “I'm going back to sleep.”

“Wait,” Neil says. “You were expecting me to come over in the morning? So I'm alive in—whenever this is?”

“I promised, didn't I?” Andrew says. 

The realization is overwhelming. He might survive the year. He might survive for years. 

“Yeah,” Neil says, tracing the shape of a key into his hand. “You did.”

*

Neil understands at least part of the conversation with older-Andrew a few weeks later, when he notices that familiar strain and then, not an hour later, ends up at a playground filled with kids wearing bright colors.

One of them is probably Andrew. That's how this seems to work, anyway—Neil goes somewhere else in time and usually in the world and ends up in Andrew's vicinity. It must have something to do with Andrew, but Neil has no idea what, or how to change it, or how to fix it. It doesn't help that he still can't make real changes. Time resets itself around him whenever he does anything bigger than a blip. 

Neil leans against the fence and looks out at the street instead of the playground. He wonders when in his own timeline he is—what's happening to little Nathaniel Wesninski right now? Is he in Baltimore? Is he learning how to use knives? Is he playing exy?

It feels like he's going to be here for a while. He can't explain how he knows, only that he does: whenever he is, wherever he is, he's going to need to find something to do to kill time.

He gets a glimpse of Andrew eventually, whizzing down a slide, the tallest kid around, which is hilarious, and then he takes off to figure out what year it is and what state he's in.

A few hours later, he's figured out that he's on the west coast and it's summer of 2003. The sun is setting, and he knows without knowing how he knows it that he won't be here for much longer. He goes back to his bench and waits.

An ice cream truck rolls by, and tallest-kid-on-the-playground Andrew chases after it. Sure enough, almost as soon as Andrew has made eye contact with the weird almost-adult sitting near the baseball diamond, there's that tug again and Neil is back in Andrew's car on the way to practice.

No one around him seems to notice he was gone. There's chatter, Andrew and Nicky cheerfully talking about something Neil can't follow, Kevin sometimes joining in, Aaron looking sulkily at his phone. Neil looks at Andrew sitting next to him and tries to figure out what the fuck is going on for probably the millionth time. He can't see future Andrew in Andrew's face, but he can't see the extremely young Andrew, either, cheerful and chasing an ice cream truck after a full day spent playing outside. It's just this one, drugged within an inch of his life, no lines around his eyes, no weirdly calm aura. 

And yet, it's this Andrew's keys in Neil's pocket, this Andrew who promised to protect Neil until May, this Andrew who saved over a hundred Raven shots on goal. 

“That's creepy,” Andrew says, pushing Neil's face away with his hand.

“Yeah, Neil, you look like you're about to serial kill him,” Nicky says, glancing up at them in the rearview mirror. “Don't do that, okay?”

“We'd be one person short of an official NCAA team,” Aaron says. “He won't.”

“He'd better not,” Kevin says, and Andrew just laughs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr](http://wilsherejack.tumblr.com)


	4. Chapter 4

The semester trudges onward.

Mostly—for the first time since that day in Millport, Arizona when Neil ended up nineteen years in the past—it does so in a linear fashion.

There's school, and then midterms and trying to survive while making attempts to glue the Foxes together, and of course there's exy, exy in the morning and exy in the afternoon and exy late at night with Kevin, so much exy that sometimes when Neil closes his eyes he can see the gym's lights on the insides of his eyelids, bright and unforgiving. There's too much to fit into each day, and Neil finds himself wishing half-heartedly for whatever time travel he was doing to come back just so he can ignore whatever situation it plops him into and take a nap. 

But it doesn't, and he's tired, and he's sore all the time from bruises or hard workouts and harder games, and he thinks he wouldn't trade any of it for the world. He starts to think he imagined the time travel. This—exy, the Foxes, all of it—is only going to last through the school year, and he thinks it would be enough, a year of this. 

And then there's Drake.

That's the first time Neil really tries to change the past, after Drake.

It's been a strange few weeks, or maybe it hasn't been. At first he thinks the lack of time travel is because of Halloween or something—isn't that a powerful day for witches? Is he a witch? It's not really Neil's area of expertise—but then he ends up sitting by a nondescript house somewhere warm for a few minutes the morning they're all set to see Nicky's parents.

So, he thinks, looking up at the house (normal; suburban; one car in the driveway but two bikes leaning against the garage door). It's not just gone. Andrew is probably upstairs somewhere being a child. Or maybe this is the future, and Andrew just happens to drive an older car model in the future. 

Almost as soon as he has the thought, he's back in Palmetto, sitting between a grinning Andrew and sulky Aaron in the back of Andrew's car.

*

Neil's theory about time travel changes after everything with Drake. He starts to think that this power, whatever it is, was trying to warn him. It always sends him somewhere near Andrew, but for a few weeks, it didn't do anything. Just kept Neil close to present-day Andrew.

Well. If the power's goal is to keep Andrew safe, it's not very good at doing its job.

Except—Neil is smoking outside the hospital with Wymack when it strikes him: he can travel through time and space. What if he finds Andrew and stops Drake?

There are two flaws in his plan that he can see: first, he hasn't been able to make any major changes. Second, he can't actually control this thing.

But he's Neil Josten, and this thing is impossible anyway, and so is the fact that he's still alive and has friends and plays exy. 

So he excuses himself to the restroom—handicapped, a single stall—and stares at himself in the mirror, much as he hates it. He checks his roots. He checks the date on his phone. He closes his eyes and tries to make it happen.

But wait—when and where is he going? He doesn't know when Andrew was in a foster home with Drake, and he doesn't know what kinds of consequences changing something that major would have on the future, but maybe he can undo just this one thing, this one awful day. Maybe he can stop Andrew from going upstairs with Luther or stop himself from asking Andrew to go see Nicky's parents at all.

Neil tries again, closes his eyes and pictures the time on a clock, four hours ago. Pictures the outside of the Hemmicks' house. Feels a breeze! Opens his eyes!

But it's just the vent, switching on and blowing down over the top of his head. Neil exhales through his nose and glares at his reflection. It glares back, defiant.

What does it feel like every time it happens? That tug in his stomach, almost like being on an elevator—or, he thinks, like landing after a jump. 

He jumps in place. Lands on the ugly tile floor. 

He eyes the toilet, then pulls off his shirt and wraps it around his hand. It's going to work this time, he thinks, and punches the mirror. 

Then he pulls his shirt back on and steps onto the toilet. 

He jumps off. He doesn't expect it to work, not really, except that then he's blinking in the sunlight and he's outside the Hemmicks' again.

Neil looks at his phone, but it's such a dinosaur that it doesn't recalibrate to match whatever time he's in. He doesn't know if a smartphone would, either, but it'd make sense, right? If it were connected to the internet?

“Okay,” he says aloud. Andrew's car is parked outside, shiny and out of place. It's a warm afternoon. He knocks on the door.

“Neil?” Nicky says, staring at him from behind the storm door. “We thought you were inside.”

“I'm not,” Neil says.

“Weren't you just at the table?”

“Nicky, listen to me. When you go back in, tell me to tell Andrew not to go back alone with Luther.”

“What are you—”

“Please, Nicky, just—”

Nicky backs away, a little shakily. “Okay, okay. You sure you're not like, some kind of evil twin or something?”

“Nicky, it's me,” Neil says desperately, and Nicky looks over his shoulder even though Neil is sure he can't see the dining room table from here. 

“Okay,” Nicky says again. “Do you want to come inside?”

“No,” Neil says. “Just go.”

Nicky nods, closing the door. Neil isn't satisfied, but weirding Nicky out a little is better than—what was it Andrew said, all those months ago, before Neil even knew him? Making the universe implode?

He goes around the back of the house instead. A fence wraps around a backyard, and for a second Neil can almost picture Nicky growing up there, in a parallel universe where his parents aren't such awful people. 

There's another car parked in the driveway, one Neil is sure wasn't there when the rest of them showed up. Neil wants to kill Drake before he even gets out of the car, but he restrains himself until the door opens.

“Hi,” Neil says. “I'm Neil.”

“Hi,” Drake says, actually smiling. “Are you friends with AJ?”

“Not exactly,” Neil says. He smiles back, his father's smile. “Listen. Do you want to die today?”

Drake stares at him, incredulous. “No.”

“If you go inside this house, you're going to,” Neil says. “Get back in your car and leave.”

“Okay, kid, sure,” Drake says, moving to push Neil out of the way.

But Neil isn't fucking around. He pulls out one of his shards of mirror.

“They call my father the Butcher of Baltimore,” Neil says. “Want me to show you why?”

“With some broken glass?” 

Neil slams the shard into the side of Drake's arm. Drake retaliates, of course, swears and hits Neil across the face when Neil tries to get around him, and then Drake lifts the bottle of liquor that Neil remembers seeing shattered on the bedroom floor and aims for Neil's head.

Neil blinks and he's back in his own time. The mirror is still broken, so he looks at the shard in his hand—the one he thought he buried in Drake's arm—and examines the bloodied side of his head. Even as he watches, the wound heals.

He looks outside: Wymack is sitting in the waiting room, looking at Neil with faint curiosity.

“Just a second,” Neil says.

Nothing. He actually traveled through actual time, and the whole thing got reset.

So—he does it again. There's no sign of his traveling self, so he takes it as a sign that the entire situation somehow got erased from history—maybe when Drake hit him.

This time he slashes the wrist Drake is holding the booze in and steals the bottle to use as a weapon himself. He hits Drake hard enough that the bottle breaks and Drake drops to the ground, blood welling up from the back of his head.

“What the—” It's Luther, coming outside.

Fuck Luther, too. Neil opens his mouth, but then he's coughing and he's back in his own time.

He's sure he's done it now. He emerges into the waiting room.

“What's wrong, Josten?” Wymack says.

Neil opens his mouth, then closes it again. “I'm—Drake—”

“He's dead,” Wymack says patiently. “He can't touch Andrew again.”

“And Andrew—”

“A nurse was just here. He'll be discharged soon.”

Neil thinks, fuck. Then he thinks it again: fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come talk to me on [tumblr](http://wilsherejack.tumblr.com)! please leave a comment if you enjoyed or spotted a typo


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for evermore & all that entails

Castle Evermore is bad.

Neil travels, but he doesn't know where or when he is most of the time, too disoriented to pay attention. Once or twice he actually sees Andrew, strapped down in a bed, eyes haunted and unsurprised at Neil's appearance. When Neil opens his mouth to say something, his vision clouds and fades to black.

He doesn't always end up near Andrew. His original fear, ending up somewhere in the ocean, seems to come true—he thinks he's drowning, there's definitely water and it's definitely salty, and then he's back in that awful castle. 

Once, he ends up in a bedroom so familiar that it makes him gag and vomit right on the spot. It's _his_ bedroom. At his father's house in Baltimore. The bed is still unmade, like the younger version of himself was just there. 

He blinks and he's in the locker room at Castle Evermore, clinging to his jersey. 

Blinks again and he's back in his bedroom. 

It seems to be a momentary peace even if it is in this nightmare house. He'd never take his father over Riko, but as long as he's not choosing, sitting still in this room on his own—gaining ground, trying to breathe—isn't the worst thing in the world. 

He sits on the floor, leans back against the door. He can hear voices downstairs, but he's too addled to focus on whose they are. Certainly not Nathan's. That's all he can tell.

Besides, young Nathaniel probably just left to go to school. Adult Nathaniel can sit here in his ugly Ravens gear for a while longer to wait it out. 

Neil pokes at a crusty spot on the carpet near his hand. The carpet in his room is dark. When he was young, he liked it because it made him feel older. Only a baby would have his room done up in bright colors. 

But as an adult, the reason for it seems obvious. It hides the blood. 

He thinks he might fall asleep there. At any rate, the next time Neil is aware of his surroundings, he's having his head slammed against a locker and barely has the energy to fight back.

*

One night (is it night?), Neil ends up on the roof next to Andrew. Not his Andrew—one who must already be sober, who is back at PSU. He looks Neil up and down, taking in his changed appearance—the bandages on his face, hair scrubbed and re-dyed its natural color, Ravens gear—and his mouth quirks in something approximating a frown.

“Where are you supposed to be?” Andrew says.

“Evermore.”

The corner of Andrew's mouth pushes itself further down, and Andrew's hand twitches like it's going to reach for Neil, but instead he just looks at the bandage on Neil's cheek.

“New tattoo?”

“How do you know about this?” Neil says. He doesn't mean his changed appearance. “I just appeared out of thin air next to you. Why aren't you freaking out?”

“Ask me.”

“I just did.”

“When you see me again,” Andrew clarifies.

“You mean when you're back from Easthaven.”

“Yes.”

“I have to ask,” Neil says. 

“I just said that.”

“I meant about you. I—Riko said—”

He can't put it into words, but Andrew seems to know what Neil's referencing anyway. His gaze goes dark. 

“I think I saw you,” Neil says. “I didn't mean to, but—” But he's completely disoriented, never has any idea what time it is, and he ended up in what must have been Easthaven more than once.

“I do not need your protection.”

“I couldn't just let it happen,” Neil says. He doesn't know what he's talking about: Ending up in Easthaven by accident? Going to Castle Evermore in the first place? Trying to stop Drake and failing, because this stupid thing that has him disoriented and dizzy and even more confused than usual actually has no real effects? “Not if I could stop it.”

Andrew looks away. “No one likes a martyr.”

Neil feels dizzy again, nauseous, bile rising in the back of his throat. “I don't know if this is real,” he says.

“Nothing involving you is,” Andrew says—or maybe it's not Andrew, maybe it's Jean, because Neil's vision is going black again and then he's on a court, artificial light stinging in a way the sun didn't, a racquet hurtling toward him from one direction while Jean shoves him in another.

“Pay attention,” Jean hisses, like Neil isn't nursing concussions on top of injuries on top of fucking time travel. 

It keeps happening. Neil hasn't made an attempt to travel at all since that failed experience with Drake, but it seems to be back to doing its own thing now, sending him back and forth to places he barely recognizes, and it's making the Ravens' sixteen hour days even worse. 

Neil is lying in his bed—or, more accurately, he's cuffed to the headboard and Riko is on top of him, knives in both his hands—when the corners of Neil's vision go fuzzy. His brain or whatever controls this takes respite on him, and suddenly Neil is in his dorm room in Fox Tower, except it's arranged differently or something.

It clicks slowly: it isn't his room. It's Andrew's. Neil starts for the door without thinking, but Kevin, who didn't look up when Neil appeared, is sitting on his own bed and immediately starts talking.

“Come see this,” Kevin says. “The Ravens' lines are destroyed without Riko or Jean, so they are relying on brute force to win games. They are still Ravens, so it works against some teams, but—”

He looks up at Neil, and his face twists and pales, like he's seen a ghost.

“Andrew,” he says, very loudly. “Where is Andrew?”

“How should I know?” Neil says, dizzy, delirious, and Kevin is already reaching for the bandage on Neil's face. 

Neil bats his hand away reflexively, which makes Kevin look down at the torn open skin there like he's never seen blood before. His mouth drops open, and he looks up into Neil's face again.

“Can you play?” Kevin says, and it's odd, how much his voice sounds like Jean's without the accent. 

“Of course I can,” Neil says, making a fist and ignoring the jolt of pain. “I still have my grip.”

Kevin gets, if possible, even paler. “Andrew!”

“He's not here,” someone calls. “He's out with—Jesus Christ, Josten, what happened to you?”

Neil stares. He doesn't recognize the girl talking to him.

“Get Andrew,” Kevin says, and then the scene dissolves and Neil blinks and there is Riko, still making a vicious attempt to flay the skin off Neil's fingers.

But the thought stays with him. Without Riko or Jean, Kevin said. And it wasn't Neil showing up that scared Kevin and the girl—it was the blood, the bandage, the injuries. 

Without thinking, Neil laughs in Riko's face. Jean clamps a hand over Neil's mouth, but it doesn't matter. Riko can do what he likes. His reign is almost over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's all smooth sailing from here 8-)
> 
> come talk to me on [tumblr](http://wilsherejack.tumblr.com). please leave a comment if you enjoyed or spotted a typo!


	6. Chapter 6

Andrew is standing on the edge of the roof and has barely spoken for the past few hours. At least, Neil thinks it's only been a few hours. He squints at the setting sun. Maybe it's been a day.

“When did you figure it out?” he says.

Andrew is quiet for so long that Neil almost thinks Andrew didn't hear him, but then finally: “When I picked you up at the airport.”

“Seriously? That long?”

“You visited me,” Andrew says. 

“When you were at Easthaven? I know. I didn't know if it was a dream or—”

“When I was a child,” Andrew interrupts. “And once when I was in high school. I didn't recognize you at first with the hair and without the—” He stops abruptly, turns to look Neil up and down, then looks into Neil's eyes. “Did I break my promise, or were you keeping yours?”

“Neither,” Neil says. “I spent Christmas in Evermore.”

Andrew goes for the bandage on his cheek, the one covering the tattoo. Neil gives a half-hearted explanation, and Andrew claps a hand over his mouth to stop it, but it doesn't matter. Neil already knows going to West Virginia was a lost cause. Proust got to Andrew anyway. Future Andrew all but confirmed it, but Neil saw for himself the state Andrew was in at Easthaven. Detoxing and never at peace. Strapped to the bed like a criminal. 

“Why haven't you done anything about the time travel?” Neil says, half to change the subject and half because it's his turn and he needs answers about this thing. 

Andrew stares back at Neil. “There is nothing I could have done. I don't control physics.” 

“You just trusted that I wasn't some evil wizard here to—”

“If you are bewitching Kevin, it is better for all of us.”

“I know I live past the year,” Neil says. “You don't have to protect me anymore. I know I survive.”

“Didn't it occur to you that you only survive because of me?”

“Maybe,” Neil says. “But nothing I've done in the past has changed the present in any way, so it stands to reason that nothing I do now will change the future.”

Andrew doesn't ask him what he tried to change. Maybe he already knows. Instead, he says, “How did you know I liked Skittles?”

“What? I don't know that.”

Andrew turns back to campus, lighting another cigarette. Neil still doesn't know what the relationship between time travel and Andrew is, and it seems like Andrew doesn't know either, but at least they're together, alive, mostly well, in this timeline. The real one. At least there's that.

*

He travels through time during the first game of the new year. One second he's drawing his arm back to aim, next he's standing in a hospital room in full exy gear.

For a second he thinks it's Easthaven. Then he thinks it's the hospital room Andrew recovered in after Drake. 

But then he sees that Andrew is sitting up in the bed, doing something on his phone. It's not after Drake. It's the future.

“Hi,” Neil says.

Andrew looks up. His eyebrows twitch a little, which is the only indication of surprise Neil can find on his face. 

“When is it?” Neil says. 

“Your senior year. When is it for you?”

“January 2018,” Neil says. “I'm supposed to be in Austin.”

“Neil Josten's famous miss at UT,” Andrew says. “Kevin wouldn't speak to you for days. Almost lost us the game. Maybe I'm not supposed to tell you that.”

“Is that how this works?” Neil says. “We just circle around each other? We know what happens to each other in the future but we never tell?”

“You're the one who said you liked surprises.”

“I hate surprises.”

Andrew's shoulders jerk up a little. A shrug, maybe. “Well, you've always been a liar.”

He sounds strange. Neil can't tell if it's the future or the IV connected to the crook of his arm.

“What happened?” he says.

Andrew doesn't answer him. Instead, he falls back on his pillows and stares up at the ceiling. Warily, Neil approaches.

“I thought I was dreaming when you showed up in Easthaven,” Andrew says. 

“But you knew about the time travel.”

“Still,” Andrew says. Almost a sigh. “Why would you go there?”

“Are you high?”

“A little.” Andrew makes a face. “I injured my back. You won't like it. But I guess you'll remember.”

“I can't control it,” Neil says. “Time travel. I mean, I can, but—not always. Not as much as I'd like.” He pauses. “I would've stayed longer if I could have.”

“I hate you.” _That doesn't mean I wouldn't blow you_. It was a clue when he said that, some indication of their apparent closeness in the future.

Would he still? “At least that hasn't changed,” Neil says, half a question.

Andrew laughs, low and startling. Neil can't stop staring. It sounds nothing like the way Andrew used to laugh. 

Andrew must read something in his face, because he says, “Don't get too used to it. It's just the meds. Again.”

“Again,” Neil says. “You don't sound like before.”

“Yeah,” Andrew agrees. 

“I'm about to leave,” Neil says, because he can feel it in the pit of his stomach, tugging. He holds himself steady. He's going to miss the goal anyway, so what's another minute? “Why do we keep meeting like this? Do we stay—” Friends isn't the right word, but he doesn't know which one to use. “Linked up? Even after my freshman year?”

“You're impossible to get rid of,” Andrew says, and then Neil is back on UT's court. 

He sends the ball flying into nowhere land, and Kevin howls something in his ear. Neil risks a glance at the bench; Andrew is watching him, expression as blank as always.

Neil lifts two fingers to his forehead, a mockery of Andrew's salute, and gets back in position. Andrew looks bored, but Neil knows better, and he almost laughs.

They're going to win. He might've missed, but he'll score again to make up for it. They're going to win. Future-Andrew told him so, and Andrew doesn't lie.

*

Neil knows the future. He knows that eventually, he and Andrew will be close enough to share a bed when Neil visits. He knows that eventually, he will ask for Andrew's opinion on his hair. Eventually, Andrew will be unhappy to see him hurt. Eventually, Andrew will smile when he sees him.

He still doesn't see it coming. 

“Nine percent of the time I don't want to kill you,” Andrew says. “I always hate you.”

It was what Andrew said in the hospital. It's what Andrew says all the time. _You're impossible to get rid of._ “Every time you say that, I believe you a little less.”

“No one asked you.”

When Andrew kisses him, Neil feels all of it. Andrew's past and future shutouts in goal, his low laugh in the hospital, the child running after an ice cream truck. Andrew reaching for the bandage on his cheek and pressing a key into Neil's hand and saying, “Ask me,” less a request and more an expectation. 

It doesn't seem possible for Andrew to be okay with this. It doesn't seem possible for Neil to trust him as much as he does—completely. He's never trusted anyone that much. His mother, Wymack—they were conditional. Andrew isn't. He knows too much about what's coming for it to be conditional. 

Neil reaches for him and stops himself, catching Andrew's sleeve instead of skin. It makes Andrew freeze anyway.

“You knew this was going to happen,” Andrew says. 

“Not exactly. I thought—” Neil stops. Andrew is still right there, so close they're breathing the exact same air.

“Tell me no,” Andrew says.

Neil is too out of breath to think straight. The wind is harsh out here, rough against his unprotected face.

“I don't want to,” he says.

Andrew doesn't care. He untwists his coat from Neil's fingers. “Let go. I am not doing this with you right now.”

“Why not?”

Andrew looks deliberately away from him. “Because. I know the difference between a yes and a nervous breakdown even if you don't.” He lights a cigarette, drops it, lights a new one. “I won't be like them. I won't let you let me be.”

Neil almost smiles. It feels like the type of moment his time travel superpower would tear him right out of, but instead it leaves him there in his present sitting next to Andrew. Forces him to deal with it. 

Monster. That's what everyone calls Andrew. Like he can't control himself.

It's the opposite. He is a person of exquisitely exercised control in all areas, even this, holding himself carefully apart from Neil and clinging to his cigarette and pressing his fingers to his mouth like he can wipe Neil right off it.

“Next time one of them calls you soulless, I might have to fight them.”

“Ninety-two percent,” Andrew says. “Going on ninety-three.”

Neil laughs out loud. There's something about Andrew. It never changes, except that of course it does. All the time, every time they meet, Andrew is different. 

But he's still this. Steady. Solid. It isn't awkward. It could be, but it isn't. Andrew doesn't have regrets, and regrets predicate awkwardness. 

“It's okay, you know,” Neil says, standing and stretching. “I wanted you to.” 

“Go away before I push you off the building.”

“I don't think you will,” Neil says. “I know the future, remember?”

He leaves anyway. He doesn't want to risk it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i really missed my chance to add a "that's so raven" joke to an earlier chapter of this, huh
> 
> also a lot of the dialogue from this chapter comes straight from the books. some of it may be slightly misremembered.
> 
> come talk to me on [tumblr](http://wilsherejack.tumblr.com)! please leave a comment if you enjoyed or spotted a typo.


	7. Chapter 7

The entire time Neil is in Baltimore, he thinks the past year has been a dream. He was wrong. He won't survive. The future was a hallucination, or else a brain that knew what was coming taking pity on him. He'll die in his father's basement. He'll die after telling Andrew he wouldn't, after making Andrew break off their deal. He'll die.

*

He's wrong, of course. He doesn't die. The future is real. Survival is real.

It hits him over and over again in the days after he gets back to Palmetto. Even in the shower with Andrew, panicky and unsure and confused and reaching for Andrew with garbage bag-wrapped fingers. He thinks of Nicky's taunt at Aaron not too long ago, _You caught feelings!_ —it feels too trite for this, but maybe it's like that. A disease. Andrew won't like it, but maybe Neil doesn't have to tell him. 

He gets to put it off a while longer when, on their way to brunch, he travels to—somewhere. Somewhen. A nice apartment, slightly familiar until Neil realizes that it's the same place he went to the first time he met Andrew. Middle aged Andrew's apartment.

“Oh, hi.”

Neil jumps. The person who spoke is—well, him. An older version of him. Just staring back, looking slightly amused. He isn't middle-aged, so it must be be before the last time Neil was here. Or something. The conflicting timelines are starting to even confuse Neil.

“Is the universe about to implode?” Neil says.

“I think I'd remember that,” older-him says.

“You remember this?”

“Obviously. It's pretty weird meeting yourself.”

Neil doesn't know what to do or say. He wants to ask older-him how he survived this long. He wants to ask older-him how long he plays exy, how Riko reacted to the tattoo being burned off, whether the Foxes actually win.

He says, “What happened with Andrew?”

“In general, or do you have a specific moment in mind?”

“Wouldn't you know if you remember this?”

“I don't remember every detail,” older-him says. “I'm not Andrew.”

“In general,” Neil says.

“He's on the roof,” older-him says. Suddenly Neil gets why people get annoyed with him. “I was just going up to join him.”

“So you two live together? Here?” Neil looks around. “Where are we?”

“Philadelphia,” older-him says. “I moved in a few months ago.”

“So you two—we—we're together?” 

Neil thought it was just physical for Andrew. He didn't expect it to last past the year. He and Andrew might be friendly in the future, but this? Not just survival, but this? He doesn't know how to take the revelation. “Why?”

Older-him considers Neil like he's really thinking about it even though he must remember what he says. “It's Andrew,” he says, like it's that obvious, and maybe it is. When Andrew says their name, he just says it, Neil, like it's a fact. Even though he knows it isn't.

It wasn't the question Neil was asking, though. He knows why he would want to. He wants to know about Andrew.

He suspects he'd have more luck asking Andrew directly, though.

“Does this keep happening?” Neil says.

“For a while. It slows down eventually, but even now.” Adult-him shrugs. “It doesn't happen during games anymore.”

“Do we ever figure out where it came from?”

“I have some theories. No confirmation, though.”

“So no mysterious wizard shows up to explain it?”

“Not yet,” older-him says. “I'm still holding out hope for the next eclipse.”

“What?”

“Nothing. It's something Nicky says.”

“Nicky knows?”

“It gets kind of hard to hide it,” older-him admits. “I think Kevin'll find out next. Or maybe it's Renee. I don't remember—I'd have to ask Andrew, but I think you're out of time.”

“Yeah,” Neil says, because there is that all too familiar tug in his stomach, like the moment before a plane lands. “I think I am.”

Andrew glances at Neil from behind the wheel as soon as Neil is back in his car. He must have noticed somehow, even if this power is precise enough to bring Neil back to the exact instant he disappeared. He doesn't say anything, though, and no one else in the car is talking. 

Sometime in the future, conversation between all of them gets easier. Maybe it's after this. Maybe they'll have brunch all together like friends today. 

Neil looks down at his bandaged hands. It'd be worth it, he thinks. If he forced them all to talk to each other by surviving near-certain death. If they're friends after this, or the next best thing. If they win, who cares if he has more scars? People can stare if they want to. They'll be staring at a champion. 

The thought distracts him enough from his revelations about his own feelings toward Andrew that he doesn't even remember to dwell on them again until they're already on their way to the cabin.

*

He doesn't usually time travel in his sleep, but tonight is different for some reason. Neil wakes up on a roof, brightness nearly blinding him, and sees a familiar figure sitting on the edge.

“Hi,” Neil says. 

Andrew turns to look at him; it must be the future, because he doesn't look surprised at Neil's sudden appearance or his injuries. He doesn't look anything. He just looks like Andrew.

Neil sits down next to him, letting his legs dangle off the side. Unlike Andrew, he has no fear of heights; roofs mean an opportunity to escape, no matter how high up they are.

“Where's your Neil?” Neil asks. 

The question comes out wrong, but Andrew answers it anyway. “In class.”

He offers Neil a cigarette, then lights it for him when he sees the state of Neil's hands.

“You know,” he says, very conversationally, sitting close enough to bump against Neil's shoulder, “I can always tell when you're from based on your injuries.”

“I can always tell how old you are based on how much you smile,” Neil replies, which shuts Andrew up. 

But only for a second. “You told me once that you tried to change the past. What did you try to change?”

“It didn't work, so it doesn't matter.”

“Tell me anyway,” Andrew says. “I'll trade you a truth.”

“You know we stopped playing that.”

“Maybe we should start again.”

“Do you think that's necessary? You already know all my secrets.”

“Except this one,” Andrew says. 

With some difficulty, Neil takes a drag of the cigarette. “I tried to stop Drake. It didn't work.”

“Obviously.”

“Yeah,” Neil says. “Obviously.”

A short silence, and then Andrew says, “I wish I'd killed you.”

“You won't,” Neil says. “I have it on good authority that we grow old together.”

“Maybe that authority is wrong.” 

“It's not.”

“Maybe the authority lied.”

Neil grins. “Maybe. He's famously a liar.”

When he turns to kiss Andrew, Andrew is already there, an inch away, waiting. 

“Yes or no?” he says. 

“I told you,” Neil says. “It's always yes with you.” 

For once, Andrew doesn't take issue with it.

When Neil gets back to his own time, his Andrew is still asleep. Neil watches him, the stillness of his face, the way his hair flutters a little when he exhales. He never looks this at peace when he's awake. Not yet, anyway. 

Hate-fucking, Nicky called it. Maybe he's right. That doesn't sound very sustainable, though, and this—whatever it is—lasts a long time.

Neil falls asleep that way, curved toward Andrew, smiling.

*

When Neil wakes up, it's to an empty bed. Andrew turns out to be in the kitchen, making coffee before any of the other Foxes have bothered to crawl out of bed.

“Morning,” Neil says. “Sleep well?”

Andrew doesn't really ever reply to small talk like that, and this is no different. Instead, he pushes a mug into Neil's hands and goes out to the balcony.

On either side of the cabin are more cabins, but behind it is just an expanse of untouched nature. Protected public land, covered in trees and probably filled with wild animals. They're on a slight slope, and the trees dip in front of them before rising again. 

It's not the type of environment Neil has ever pictured himself in. He wouldn't really have been able to picture Andrew in it, either, but it's nice anyway. It's quiet. He can imagine living somewhere quiet like this, maybe after he retires from exy.

The thought of it makes his heart soar all over again. He might have a chance at a career. He might be able to actually retire from the sport. He's outlived his father. He knows he'll outlast Riko. Who else is there?

“Knowing the future is pretty great,” Neil admits.

Andrew doesn't reply at first, choosing instead to light a cigarette and take a few relaxed drags. Neil wonders if Andrew ever kicks the habit—he never remembers to ask. 

“What is it in particular that you think you know?”

“That I live,” Neil says. “Not just through the year, but for a while. I know you end up playing pro exy, and somewhere down the line we live together.” 

Nicky thinks it's hate sex, but people don't live with people they hate fuck. Right?

“And I know our apartment is nice,” Neil adds. “I think you might stay at one team for your entire career, but I haven't figured it out yet. It's a little complicated.” Like putting together a puzzle one piece at a time without knowing what the end result is supposed to look like, maybe. “Apparently in the future, we don't like telling each other what happens. Apparently I like surprises.”

“Do you?” Andrew says.

Neil considers it. He wants to say no, but nearly every good thing that's happened to him in the past year has been a surprise. Wymack showing up in Arizona with Andrew and Kevin, Andrew offering his protection, the Foxes making it this far, his father getting shot, fucking time travel. Andrew kissing him, Andrew letting him stay, Andrew covering up his bandages with trash bags and duct tape. Maybe Neil hasn't thought it through properly. Maybe surprises get a bad rap.

“They're not the worst thing in the world,” Neil says.

“No,” Andrew agrees. He digs a finger into the collar of Neil's shirt to drag him closer. “They're not.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yall i was going to update yesterday but i live in boston so as you can probably imagine i was otherwise occupied
> 
> come talk to me on [tumblr](http://wilsherejack.tumblr.com)! please leave a comment if you enjoyed or spotted a typo.


End file.
